A novel intelligent control method in MAC protocol for the robustness of power line communication networks

Power line communication (PLC) over low-voltage grid, is an attractive technology for no-new-wiring networks. In such typical application fields as home networks and street lighting management system, PLC network is always vulnerable in robustness and the logical link is liable to be destroyed because of the different user's personalities and the special channel properties. To improve the robustness of PLC network, the reasons that lead to the failure of data link are revealed, and the main achievements of randomized initialization protocols for ad hoc networks are studied. According to the study results, a novel low cost intelligent control method in MAC protocol is proposed to automatically maintain the logical connectivity of the PLC network. The performance of the method is evaluated theoretically and experimentally.